Barriers broken down in aftermath of tragedy

I can’t speak for all the journalists covering the shootings at the mosques in Christchurch but the job we do is one way of being distracted from brooding on the lives devastated.

Journalists get used to battling with not necessarily compatible emotions in events like this. We have the same emotions of shock, loss and sympathy but we also need to get the story and pictures.

The feeling that New Zealand had changed irretrievably with the shootings was overwhelmed by where to go, who to interview, how close to get. As I walked briskly towards the Masjid Al Noor on Friday , I worried to my shame that we had missed out on the action. I also looked at what I was wearing and thought only my shirt would make any sort of bandage if called on to help.

I don’t mean to make this column about us, the reporters. I don’t expect any sympathy and don’t ask for any. Journalists are not the story.

The competing priorities did not mask awareness of the extent of the calamity. It was clear in the faces we saw and the stories we heard. It will take time to properly absorb the horrors and feelings about them.

Being close to the happenings and the people affected allows some insights, that, even if they have been expressed already, bear repeating.

Most journalists have been struck by the openness and lack of hostility from relatives and friends of the victims. We often intrude on grief, usually for good reasons, and get mixed reactions. But with this man-made disaster, people have been eager to have their stories told.

On one of the cordons last Friday, we had on one side a man who still had blood on his hands from tending to an injured teenager and, on the other, a woman weeping for the lost. People there still wanted to relate what had happened even as they fielded a barrage of calls from concerned relatives. Get the story out, they seemed to be saying.

With this attitude the most affected by the shootings have done their related communities in New Zealand a great service. With the telling of their stories, they have shown their struggles, hopes and joys are much the same as those who feel they have a greater connection to these islands by birth and ancestry.

By letting us into their lives, the Muslim community in Christchurch has helped break down barriers that should never have been there in the first place.

The change of attitude sparked by shootings will not necessarily make us into good or better people in the long run but it might help. One of our reporters, whose appearance clearly indicates an ancestry in the Asian subcontinent, was subjected to a foul racial insult in Christchurch a couple of years ago. This week he got hugs. The outpourings of goodwill may be shortlived but it at least they set a benchmark.

Journalists got another insight last week when they were ushered into a courtroom in Christchurch to report on the shooter’s court appearance.

He was not the monster of evil eye and frothing mouth that we might have expected.Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has vowed never to mention his name. I’m not sure that is helpful. It almost increases his notoriety. His actions are unspeakable but we should speak his name. His evil was human and that human should be named.The shooter has, for the moment, achieved exactly the opposite of what he was hoping to do. Instead of the discord and hatred he was hoping to sow, his killings have created a closer and more cohesive Christchurch and New Zealand.

He has shattered the conceits we have about our safe and green country but he has also put in neon lights the dangers of our tendency to dehumanise members of our community because they worship differently or don’t look like us.

From this loss of innocence, something stronger may grow.